Google Home review: Taking back the living room

Don't look for a "definitive" review of Google Home just yet — because it's just getting started. But it's already very, very good.

Google's position in the home remains a little precarious, if you think about it. Or at least it's still very much in catch-up mode.

It's been some five years since Android @Home failed to launch. (You're forgiven if you don't remember that one.) The original Google TV was underpowered and finally grasped onto the third rail that was (and still is) cable television. The Nexus Q was an early, expensive and rightfully aborted (never mind the damned sphere was beautiful) attempt at what sort of morphed into the brilliantly simple Chromecast.

No, breaking into the home isn't easy. Except Amazon over the past two years proved it's possible with the Echo — its first connected speaker and the shell for the real brains of the operation, Alexa. The hardware's the easy part. Bluetooth speakers aren't exactly new. The connectivity — actually being able to do something — that's where things really get important. And while Alexa started slow — the potential was obvious when I first reviewed the Echo in early 2015 — it's grown by leaps and bounds since then.

All this is to say that Google's been behind, and it's been behind for a long time. But Google's changed a lot in the past couple years. It's got a new hardware division. And in the new Google Home (along with the new Google Assistant), it's got the makings of a fun little home hub that might well put Alexa back in the box.

Let's take a look.

About this review

We're writing this after a day with Google Home. Short? Yeah. But this isn't a hard product to wrap your head around. It's a retail unit we purchased from Google for $129. I've got it in my kitchen, alongside my Amazon Echo, in the windowsill, facing east. (There's not a lot to say here. It's a connected speaker. Over and out.)

The hardware

As you'd expect from this sort of product, there's not a lot going on in the Google Home box. Speaker. Power cord. That's it. The cord fits smartly (and vertically) into the base of the speaker, and you plug in the surprisingly large wall wart. The hidden lights flash through the sliced-off top, and Google Home comes to life.

Setup is simple enough. Fire up the renamed Google Home app (formerly the Chromecast app) and it'll spot the Google Home speaker and prompt you to set it up. From there you'll give it access to your Wi-Fi and your Google account, and you're on your way.

Being a little short and squat myself, I suppose I've got a predisposition for products of the same stature. Whereas the Amazon Echo is tall and skinny — I still see it as a black obelisk — Google Home is far more stout. It's a tad under 6 inches tall, and flares out to nearly 4 inches at the waist. Unlike the Echo, I'm not at all afraid I'm going to knock it over, particularly in my busy kitchen.

As a speaker, Google Home is surprisingly good.

The matte white body is understated. I'm a little worried about clunking it up in the kitchen — food and sauce can fly — but at the same time it doesn't show oil from fingers like you get on the Echo. That's a win. We'll also eventually be able to swap out the fabric pants worn by Google Home for something a little more snazzy. But for now, it's a gray base. There's an awkwardly placed on/off mic button on the back — for those times you don't want Google Home listening for you.

And Google Home is listening for you. The far-field microphones are legit. I can speak in a soft voice from 10 feet away, careful to not wake sleeping children, wife or dog, and it hears me. And as a really cute trick, Google's smart enough to only answer on Google Home if you happen to have a phone nearby that also was triggered by the "OK, Google" hotword. Nice.

As a speaker, Google Home is surprisingly good. There's something to be said for fat bottoms here, but the amount of bass that comes out of the 2-inch drivers is truly impressive. That goes for music as well as spoken word.

The former isn't to be overlooked here. I don't use the Amazon Echo as a Bluetooth speaker all that much because Bluetooth is still pretty awful even after all this time. It's awful to connect. It's awful to disconnect. It's awful when you forget you're connected and start piping every sound from your phone into another room and spend a few seconds wondering what the hell is going on.

Google Home, however, is a proper "Cast" target. That is, if you're familiar with Chromecast and Chromecast Audio, it'll appear as a device to which you can send media — and only media, not your full phone output. Google Home does the actual streaming — your phone just told it where to go. (This Cast protocol, to me, is still one of Google's finer achievements over the past couple years.)

Voice is extremely important, too, of course. Google Home talks to you. It answers your questions. It gives you information. It's maybe a little more clunky than I'd like. Saying "OK, Google ..." before every command is sort of a phonetic mess, and not as easy to say as just "Alexa ..." (But on the other hand that probably makes it better trigger phrase.)

Being tied into Google an my Google Account, there's a lot more Google Home can answer.

For a good place to start, try "OK, Google. Tell me about my day." You get time and weather information, then a quick rundown of your schedule. I've got a meeting at 8 a.m. Cool. I didn't expect a reminder of my sole reminder — "By the way, don't forget to take a pill." Nice touch. It'll then launch into the news, exactly like Amazon does with its Flash Briefing feature.

Being tied into Google an my Google Account, there's a lot more Google Home can answer. (There's a handy list here.) That's not to say there's not room for improvement. I can have my schedule read back to me, but I can't yet add anything to it through Google Home. (Doing so by voice works just fine on my phone, of course.)

It's annoyances like that that show how young Google Home still is. (And reminds me of the early days of Amazon Echo.) A connected speaker is only as good as it is connected.

You're limited (at launch) to only four music sources, at least directly. (Those are Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Spotify and Pandora.) That certainly covers a lot of folks' needs, but four sources is still only four sources. But, again, Google Home is a perfect Cast target, so there's that.

Google Home will serve as a connected home hub as well. But at launch it's only available for Philips Hue, Nest and Samsung's SmartThings. That list will grow as Google opens up its new "Actions" portal for extending the Google Assistant. Look for that in December. But in the initial weeks, things are limited. This much is clear, though (and I've said so previously) — Google has a proper smart phone foundation on its hands here.

(By the way — Google Home not only turns Philips Hue lights on and off, it can control the colors, too. Alexa can't.)

What you'll really want to do is spend some time in the Google Home settings. They're a little buried — go to the Home app, then Devices in the pull-out menu, and then hit overflow menu and choose settings. But then you'll be able to customize a mess of things. The aforementioned "Home Control" options for lighting and Nest. You can choose which news sources read to you, and in what order. (That list is pretty darn extensive.) You can choose what you want fed back to you as part of that "Tell me about my day" thing.

This also is where the Chromecast feature is tucked in — you can tell Google Home to play music or video on specific targets. (I'm having varying degrees of success with that, though. And in any event I think maybe that's going to be a niche case and starting visual streams from a phone or tablet will ultimately be easier.)

And finally, if you want to use Google Home to call an Uber, you can link your account in here as well.

The bottom line (so far)

Google Home is a thing. And as such it is a thing that needs to be reviewed. But this is far from a complete review, because Google Home is far from a complete product. It's a look at Google Home right now. Like the Amazon Echo and Alexa, Google Home and Google Assistant are going to evolve. A lot.

The Cast protocol, to me, is still one of Google's finer achievements over the past couple years.

In other words, Google Home on day one is about what you'd expect from Google Home on day one. You've got a really good speaker, and a capable but limited assistant. And you've got an easily relocated Cast target that can be grouped together (a la Sonos) for whole-house coverage of music.

As others have mentioned — and as we've been talking about since Google first showed us that compelling product video at Google I/O back in May — Google Home currently only serves one master. That is, you can only have one Google account tied to it. So while I can get the overview of my day easily enough, my wife can't get hers. That's a big damper. (Google's aware of this limitation, of course, and went so far as to say "Linked account(s)" in the settings. They're on it.)

Then there's the matter of price. Google Home comes in a full $50 cheaper than Amazon Echo. But like Echo, that's also still a bit more than I think I want to spend on loading my house up with these things. At least not yet. It's not that $129 is a bad price for Google Home, especially on day one. But buying a couple at $99 would be a good bit easier to get away with.

For a Google/Android fan, Google Home is a no-brainer. It's got all the makings of Alexa, in the proper ecosystem, with the full force of Google behind it. (It also looks a good bit better, I think.) If you're not a Google user, then you're not going to get as much out of it, insofar as the Assistant stuff is concerned. But that doesn't mean it's a paperweight. Not hardly.

Reader comments

Google Home review: Taking back the living room

I'm waiting until it can act more like the Star Trek computer. We now have remotes that turn on a bank of hidden LED light strips in TTV room, turn on an outside light, a marble fountain, audio/video eqipment etc.
At some point would like a system that "talks" the same language as most remotes. Having it talk to just a couple of expensive light bulbs doesn't do it - or talking to a very expensive thermostat.

Question - If I have a Chromecast audio stuck in our main sound system receiver - can I "talk" to it via the Home device?

well it took a bit of doing to set up but I think Alexa will be moving on out or maybe to another room and Google Home will stick around. No needing to open up the Alexa app to open up the tune-in radio app then to search for a channel - just ask Hey Google play WDHA and I had it playing. When Best Buy gets the bases I may get a different color. But it sounds great. Should be great to hear my NHL games on

Nice review, I don't know if you recommend the Echo - but from my experience the Home is already better than the Echo for "plug and play" useage, and the fact that it's $50 less expensive makes it even more so. The only advantages Echo has (in my world anyway) are the fact that I can (more) easily play Audible books on that device and it's infinitely less annoying to say Alexa than Google. That said, my "Smart Home" consists of Home, one Echo, Nest thermostats Hue lights, and several Google Cast devices, so I'm pretty much the ideal user for Home. I don't care about ordering stuff from Amazon by voice, or being told the status of my Amazon orders. I do care about being able to play audio throughout my house and controlling the thermostat & lights easily (as you said, first world problems).

Selfishly, I hope Home is wildly successful because the more users, the more training data Google has to improve the voice recognition.

Can anyone comment on the speaker volume/quality vs. a bluetooth speaker such as the Bose Soundlink or Jawbone Big Jambox? I specifically have the Big Jambox and really like it - quality is good (enough) and volume is more than sufficient for my apartment. If this is NOT a downgrade from that, then I'm all in. It would be much more convenient to use than the Jambox for music (would just use Jambox for portability, which is its killer feature).

I have the Soundlink Mini, and it's not nearly as good. Podcasts and the like sound fine. Music has some bottom end, but too much mid, so it's somewhat muddy. Might be good enough at low volume for working/studying. I can't see myself playing much music on the thing, but I'm pretty picky (which is why I went with the Soundlink in the first place).

Because there is no unique voice-model training for Google Home (not yet anyway), my Google Home device keeps responding to the "Ok Google" statements in Google's Pixel TV commercials and then does the query, even though the device is not close by. it's become a bit of a nuisance in that way, but I do love the product. I'm hoping the voice-model training will happen soon. One thing to point out is that the answer to the query is the same as that in the tv commercial, lol.

I tried that. I even have a Tune-In Radio account and it worked for some stations and not for others, but I can't tell what the commonality is when it worked...I tried using the station name, station number, sometimes it worked using both name and number, sometimes it worked using only name or number. Sometimes it didn't work at all.

Assuming this is one of the fine-tuning elements. Definitely liking it a lot. And I'm impressed by the speaker's sound when playing music. It's not the same as my Sony Google Cast speaker, but I certainly wouldn't expect it to be.

Got two today.... So far I like it a lot....I was planning on giving one away as a gift but now I'm thinking I might keep both. I really hope Google integrates thermostat control for other connected thermostats and not just nest....I hated nest. Got rid of it for an Emerson and love it.

If you grabbed one of these, and have Android phones, use "Hey Google" instead of "Ok Google" to talk to it-- because my Nexus 9 was set to wake up whenever it heard "Ok Google," screen on or not, absolutely killed my battery playing with the Home yesterday.

It was also a giant pain in the ass to be doing something on my phone, then ask the Home to do something else, only to have the OK Google window pop up on the phone- yeah, it *usually* figured out that multiple things caught the trigger phrase, but not always.

One thing that I read in another review that is potentially troubling is when you say "ok Google", the nearest device will answer. I know this is an intentional feature since Google made a big deal out of it. However, if I'm giving my phone a command such as mute, call someone, or some other phone specific order, if i'm nearer to Google Home, it won't be able to complete the command. For example, if I'm near Google Home and my phone is nearby and I say "Ok Google, call mom". Google home will pick it up but since it can't call anyone, it effectively cancels my command for my phone. I'd have to go in a corner and whisper to my phone where Google Home can't hear me. Is there a solution to this that I'm not aware of?

This is NOT true. Have mine firing off songs and my Android tablet has a new message after listening and that is another device is listening. So it does listen but does not do anything. I do not know how it knows.

I am using lollypop on tablet.

Love the Google Home so far. One thing it does if you say I'm Google and do not give a command for a while she will say "yes?"

If Home hears you, the nearest Home will always take the command, over the phone. If you want to do something specific on the phone, you just press the Google Search mic on the phone, and then give the phone your command.

My google home will be here monday and really excited to give it a try and park it right next to my Echo for testing. One thing this thing desperately needs is multi account support based on voice recognition. Once it gets that it will be an amazing product.

From the reviews I've seen so far, it cannot do quite a few of things that Google Now has been doing for a while. For example, to release this without the ability to add a simple reminder is pretty sad imo. I'm not a fan of buying tech for features that are yet to come, so I guess it's not yet a no brainer for me. Seems a bit half-baked.

The point behind products like this is it gets better from users using it. So, if you were using it, you'd contribute to it getting better sooner. That's why the Amazon Echo was initially released only to Amazon Prime members and special invites for a full 7 months before it was released to the public. That 7 month period was used to make it better. The Echo had very little functionality during that initial release period.

That's true, early adopters will help improve the product. Some things will simply up to Google to either implement or not and when they decide to do so. It will be interesting to see how quickly they add features. Having competing products in this segment will hopefully be a win for users of either device.

I don't want to sound harsh and I'm not disagreeing with your "not a review"... but it is clear that Google has dumped a lot of money on you guys to advertise Pixel and other products so it is hard to get an objective opinion from this site for a while when it comes to google stuff. It oozes out of most of the articles.

But it is currently "Google Central" as of the last 2 weeks when Google FINALLY decided to start advertising their phones.. but they picked AC to dish it hard and that's fine and all.. but may be best to wait for any opinion based articles until after the advertising contract has passed.

No, it's not clear that Google has dropped a lot of money on them. Stop with the ridiculous "hawt takes". This is an [b]ANDROID[/b] blog. The Pixel is the latest and greatest from the people that actually maintain [b]ANDROID[/b].

They like the phone. If you've been here for any amount of time, you'd know that they almost always prefer Google's vision of ANDROID. If you don't like the review, there are countless other sites that might offer up the opinion you want to see from the pundits. Get this, you can pen your own "objective" review.

Nah.. I've been reading AC a long time and there's a difference between being a fan and outright waxing poetic ad nauseum about a product.
It reads like :
"Google home is amazing, its even better if you use Google Home with the new Google Pixel in your pocket. The Google Pixel has the same Google Assistant that is in your fantastic Google Home. If you don't have the Google Home or the Google Pixel, then you should search Google.com for Google Google Google and buy it now because it rains sunshine and ponies and don't forget how great it is to be Googlicious.... GOOGLE!"

Or maybe Google has made some really great products and AC is reflecting that. And considering that I'm seeing quite a few reviewers calling the Pixel the best Android phone, I'm gonna choose to believe they're just giving an honest opinion and not the ridiculous idea that Google is paying them.

No doubt. Google has made really great products, but there is an objective way to relay that, and a persuasive way. Read a few other blogs, watch a few pixel vs sgs7 and pixel vs iphone videos. The pixel is great, but the general consensus is that it is a lot slower than older phones, and the price is a bit high for what you get compared to other similar phones. It's an 85 phone tho ac treats it like a 96, it's just not realistic. Watch the videos of home vs alexa... They are fairly even, each having pros and cons. I have both and while fun, home still needs some work. I'd like more of the reality reflected here.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I really don't think that Google is paying them. Now, that being said, Android Central is definitely akin to something like a Google apologist. And I'm okay with that. I come here because I like that they get excited about new Google products and gush about them. For more measured reviews I check out other sites like CNET and the Verge.

I wouldn't mind a bit more in depth analysis of how it works when you tell it to play X at different locations either... I agree it's sorta silly for video but as a command station for the 4 Chromecast Audios I've got it'd be ideal, provided I can actually get it to play X music at Y location/zone thru voice commands.

" And as a really cute trick, Google's smart enough to only answer on Google Home if you happen to have a phone nearby that also was triggered by the "OK, Google" hotword. Nice. "

Is there a 'not' missing in that sentence or something? Or are you saying that if i ask something and both phone and Home are triggered only the Home will answer and the phone will just sit there despite being triggered?

How do Wear devices play into that dynamic? I'd test it myself but I'm in the middle of a move so Home is sitting in it's box for possibly another week.

I just got mine. This was a no brainer for me. I had the Echo but returned it after a few days. Yeah its neat, and it was my introduction to a "home" device, but I didnt use it for Amazon Music (which sucks compared to Google Music imo), I didnt use it to order things from Amazon, and I do not have a Nest or any connected lighting . Now considering I have 3 Chromecasts, I have been a subscriber to Google Music for years (still in the 7.99 camp), and other things, this just makes more sense for me personally . I LOVE the form compared to the Echo as well. Its small and fits nicely in any corner, and just has a cleaner look about it. I cant wait to see what is in store for this little device!

I think Phil is great and I really miss him on the podcast. With that said, he must have worked his tail off because everyone else has stepped up their game in his absence. I enjoy more thought out opinions from the rest of the staff, it has made AC that much better.